Russell and Preventive War: A Reply to David Blitz

Abstract

iscussion RUSSELL AND PREVENTIVE WAR: A REPLY TO DAVID BLITZ R P, J. Philosophy / Plymouth State College Plymouth,  –,  @.  avid Blitz has provided a valuable contribution to Russell scholarship on Dthe perplexing controversy concerning Russell’s alleged preventive war phase following World War  (–) when many Russell scholars and commentators have claimed that Russell supported a preventive war against the . Blitz provides a very comprehensive overview of Russell’s ideas during this period and of the evolution of his thought on war and peace in the atomic age and its consistency with the non-absolute pacifism in World War  which he shared with Einstein. But on the specific question of whether Russell advocated preventive war against the  in the period in question, a lot of what Blitz has to say is either not new, or oversimplifies the matter by ignoring important details. Blitz answers his article’s main question in the negative: Russell did not advocate preventive war; rather he “proposed the strategic policy of conditionally threatening war” (p. ). I essentially agree. But where Blitz distinguishes between advocating “preventive war” and the “conditional threat of war”, I distinguish between “unconditional” and “conditional” advocacy of preventive war. I don’t really care whether one chooses to call Russell’s advocation in the years following World War  “a form of preventive war” or not, so long as we understand that what he advocated was, as I originally put it, that: PWc The /West ought to wage war against the Soviets unless they agree, under threat of war, to international controls (of atomic energy/armaments).  David Blitz, “Did Russell Advocate Preventive Atomic War against the ?”, Russell, n.s.  (): –.  Ray Perkins, Jr., “Bertrand Russell and Preventive War”, Russell, n.s.  (): . russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  -  Discussion This is essentially what Blitz means by “conditionally threatening war” (although , for reasons given below, I’m not quite satisfied with his analysis). My “unless” formulation is logically equivalent to the following conditional: If, under threat of war, the Soviets do not agree to international controls, then the /West should wage war against them. It’s important to be clear about what we mean by putting the Soviets “under threat of war” here. Russell’s examples make it reasonably clear that he intended an unambiguous message to be conveyed directly to the Russians: that failure to comply with the /West’s call for international controls would mean war, i.e. that the /West would initiate war against them. In Russell’s words: “I think you could get so powerful an alliance that you could turn to Russia and say, ‘It is open to you to join this alliance if you will agree to the terms [international controls]; if you will not join us we shall go to war with you’.” I also agree, as I made clear in my original article, that Russell never publicly espoused preventive war in the sense of advocating that the /West should immediately wage war against the Soviet Union. But Blitz’s formulation and explanation fall short of accurately explicating what Russell was up to in the period in question in several ways: (a) Blitz fails to give due importance to the fact that Russell publicly advocated the threat of war only when he thought there was a reasonable chance that the Soviets would comply with the threat. (b) Although he acknowledges the fact, Blitz underplays the importance of Russell’s willingness, failing Russian compliance, to carry out the threat. And (c) Blitz’s inattention to the issue of the likelihood of Soviet compliance causes him to fail to identify and explain an important error in Russell’s later accounts. (a). This fact has a lot to do with the question of Russell’s moral culpability. And while some seem to think that the outcome-expectation on the part of the advocate is irrelevant to the moral question, I believe it is relevant and partially vindicates Russell from charges of advocating an immoral policy; certainly Russell thought so. Utilitarians commonly distinguish between the objective rightness or wrongness of an action and its subjective rightness or wrongness,  Blitz notes correctly that “A unless B...